I was a YAF belonging - National Review subscribing - Goldwater applauding -conservative candidate door knocking - card carrying conservative. So I know a bit about it from the inside.

Really! I knew there was a spark of something in there somewhere... Remember, even Darth Vader eventually came back from the Dark Side :-)

I think you are evaluating my present views on the basis of small sample on this list. I did not mean to suggest that they have changed completely from what they were in the 60s. I still consider myself fairly conservative on some issues today. To the extent that my views have changed, it's been largely because of more serious engagement with implications of the Christian faith which began when I started seminary. I don't consider it the dark side. (Yes, I see the smiley. But I don't want to be misunderstood here just for the sake of a little humor.)

& one of the tragic mistakes the conservative movement made was failure to give appropriate support to the civil rights movement.

This is a fair point, but I think the comparison to economic conservative responses to global warming has to be more nuanced. As you say, not all serious Goldwater conservatives were racist ... but many were, and many racists appropriated conservative political ideas. It is extremely difficult to separate the serious liberty / economic arguments made against some early civil rights activism from racist motives. Even today, it's difficult to discuss whether some of the civil rights era jurisprudence remains viable -- say, in the context of race-based higher education admissions policies.

Yes, some conservatives of the 60s were racist. Part of the naivete of others was not seeing that clearly enough - e.g., not realizing what "Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice" meant to some southern whites. & those racists of the 60s are paralleled by some today who deny global warming & the need to do anything about it for purely selfish reasons - see my earlier post today.

& the questionable character of some civil rights legislation & jurisprudence is what I meant when I said, "the failure of conservatives to contribute positively to many of them meant that some unfortunate social features resulted."

It's also important, I think, to recall that the civil rights movement was based heavily on a Christian notion of natural law (and natural theology!), as articulated in MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. My views on government regulation tend towards a Coasian, Chicago-school approach, which is most associated with economic conservatives. My views on government generally, however, draw on broader principles of natural law similar to those held by MLK. I think the Coasian / economic approach to regulatory theory has to be contextualized in a wider natural law framework. In this respect, I depart from hard-core libertarian and Chicago-school folks.

With racism, there's a clear natural law basis for government intervention, and the type of regulation required also is often equally clear. If African-Americans are excluded from public services such as buses and schools because of race, clearly government must adopt rules to change that practice.

Certainly people like Russell Kirk & Bill Buckley weren't unfamiliar with the natural law tradition!

With a broad environmental problem like climate change, it seems to me the natural law basis for government intervention is less clear, at least as to the scope and nature of intervention required. Because the activities that cause CO2 emissions form the backbone of the global economy, including in poor developing countries, any regulation has to be balanced against the possible near-term destruction of peoples' livelihoods. This simply is not true of most regulation designed to combat racism. In fact, economic theory would predict that the overall economy benefits when everyone, regardless of race, has the opportunity to develop skills and contribute to growth.

Yes, the impact of people's livelihoods of any environmental regulation has to be taken into account. That's why Leviticus 25 is a significant texts. OTOH, the impact of any economic process on the environment also has to be taken into account. Environmental protection can't always be trumped just by saying "jobs."

At the end of the day, then, I think the comparison between the civil rights movement and global warming is superficial at best.

Actually what I was suggesting was a comparison between conservative attitudes toward the civil rights movement & the environmental movement rather than between civil rights & the environment directly.

On 2/4/07, George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:
>
>
> Since conservatism has been mentioned here, let me take this opportunity (since I don't especially want to watch Prince's Super Bowl halftime show) to suggest a parallel with a serious mistake the conservative movement made 40 to 50 years ago. I preface it by saying that while I don't claim to be the final authority on conservatism or to have been especially high up in the movement, during that period (& later) I was a YAF belonging - National Review subscribing - Goldwater applauding -conservative candidate door knocking - card carrying conservative. So I know a bit about it from the inside.
>
> & one of the tragic mistakes the conservative movement made was failure to give appropriate support to the civil rights movement. This was not because all conservatives - & especially the serious political & intellectual leaders of the movement - were racists or unaware of some of the racial injustice in the country. But there were lots of apparently good reasons for shying away from the efforts of MLK & other black leaders. Sure, it was wrong for hotel & restaurant ownners &c to refuse to serve blacks - but a person does have a right to do what he wants with his private property. (No one said his/her back then.) Sure it's wrong to refuse to sel a house to a black person but "a man's home is his castle." There seemed to be sound conservative arguments against the federal government interfering with a state's criteria for voting & the Supreme Court's decisions on school intergration.
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> & there were dubious things about the civil rights movement. Some of its leaders had socialist ideas & liberal theology. Communists were in favor of it, & communism was the most serious threat the country faced at the time.
>
> So conservatives could oppose civil rights legislation & make marriages of convenience with people who in fact were racists & intent on maintaining the status quo in the south (though the ones respectable conservatives cooperated with generally had the good sense not to wear their klan outfits in public). I don't think we were stupid or intentionally dishonest but we were naive about some things, like imagining that gradual & individual approaches to some of the problems would overcome entrenched & determined resistance. We were wrong.
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> Politically, conservatives traded black support for southern white support (broadly speaking). Perhaps that was a short term pragmatic gain. Morally, to put it as generously as possible, we were short sighted. (I'm talking about reasonably intelligent & principled conservatives. The movement also served - & serves - as a cover for racists & various types of nuts whom I have no wish to defend.) In terms of actual results, conservative opposition didn't stop legals remedies for racial injustices, but the failure of conservatives to contribute positively to many of them meant that some unfortunate social features resulted.
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> Conservatives like to recall Santayana's statement, "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
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> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/